Jeremiah 52

Jeremiah 52:15

John Chrysostom: And as Isaiah said before, “Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we would have been as Sodom and would have been made like to Gomorrah.” Here again he shows another thing, that not even those few were saved by their own resources. They too would have perished and met with Sodom’s fate, that is, they would have had to undergo utter destruction. They (of Sodom) were destroyed root and branch and left not even the slightest remnant of themselves. They too, he means, would have been like these, unless God had used much kindness to them and had saved them by faith. This happened also in the case of the visible captivity, the majority having been taken away captive and perished and some few only being saved. — HOMILIES ON Romans 16

Jeremiah 52:31

Jerome: [Daniel 5:1] “Belshazzar the king made a great feast for his one thousand nobles; and each one drank in the order of his age.” It should be known that this man was not the son of Nebuchadnezzar, as readers commonly imagine; but according to Berosus, who wrote the history of the Chaldeans, and also Josephus, who follows Berosus, after Nebuchadnezzar’s reign of forty-three years, a son named Evilmerodach succeeded to his throne. It was concerning this king that Jeremiah wrote that in the first year of his reign he raised the head of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, and took him out of his prison (Jeremiah 52:31). Josephus likewise reports that after the death of Evilmerodach, his son Neriglissar succeeded to his father’s throne; after whom in turn came his son Labosordach. Upon the latter’s death, his son, Belshazzar, obtained the kingdom, and it is of him that the Scripture now makes mention. After he had been killed by Darius, King of the Medes, who was the maternal uncle of Cyrus, King of the Persians, the empire of the Chaldeans was destroyed by Cyrus the Persian. It was these two kingdoms which Isaiah in chap. 21 (Isaiah 21:7) addresses as a charioteer of a vehicle drawn by a camel and an ass. Indeed Xenophon also writes the same thing in connection with the childhood of Cyrus the Great; likewise Pompeius Trogus and many others who have written up the history of the barbarians. Some authorities think that this Darius was the Astyages mentioned in the Greek writings, while others think it was Astyages’ son, and that he was called by the other name among the barbarians. “And each one of the princes who had been invited drank in the order of his own age.” Or else, as other translators have rendered it: “The king himself was drinking in the presence of all the princes whom he had invited.” — St. Jerome, Commentary on Daniel, CHAPTER FIVE